Mid-State Regional Task Force Meeting

at SUNY Cortland in the Sperry Bldg. The specific room location will be posted on the entry doors for your reference.

Our upcoming meeting will be a work session to begin and/or continue our work on the following activities:

1. Regional Higher Education Leadership Summit on Inclusive Elementary Teacher Preparation
We plan to invite leaders from higher education institutions (deans, chairs, coordinators, field placement directors) to a round table discussion regarding ways to best prepare teachers for inclusive education. The Summit will be held at Lemoyne College in the Spring 2010.

2. IM:PACT – Inclusive Models: Partnering Achieving Classrooms Today
We plan to provide financial support for teachers from high needs schools to visit classrooms that have been found to have promising inclusive practices through the S3TAIR project. This activity requires all teachers to meet and discuss ways that their inclusive practices are working well and to identify challenges and possible solutions to improve their practice.

3. Regional mini-grants
We plan to invite our Taskforce members to write proposals for $1000 mini-grants to support local, small scale efforts to promote the S3TAIR project. Calls for proposals will be sent out in early October.
4. Regional summer symposium for inservice teachers and staff AND for preservice teachers
We plan to invite inservice and preservice teachers to a symposium on promising inclusive practices. The day-long activity will include some whole group participation and times when inservice and preservice teachers will be grouped separately for purposeful and distinct discussions. The symposium will be held at SUNY Cortland near the end of April 2010. Taskforce members who represent a higher education institution will be asked to bring their preservice students to the day-long symposium. Regional inservice teachers will be invited to attend.